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Money ultimately derives much of its usefulness from confidence: confidence that a dollar can be exchanged tomorrow for goods, labor, energy, technology, food, housing, or healthcare. That principle raises an unusual but useful economic thought experiment: what if the value of the United States’ most liquid money supply were conceptually benchmarked against a standardized medical stethoscope? As of August 2026, the Federal Reserve’s seasonally adjusted measure of M1 stood at approxim …